


Etude In Blue

by dresdendisco



Category: Panic! at the Disco
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-04
Updated: 2020-08-04
Packaged: 2021-03-06 07:28:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,041
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25709749
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dresdendisco/pseuds/dresdendisco
Summary: Summary: Brendon doesn’t want to think about work or bills or how he had woken up this morning supremely awkward, wondering if he had ruined a new friendship by letting his sleep deprived mouth run away from him again.
Relationships: Ryan Ross/Brendon Urie
Kudos: 9





	Etude In Blue

**Author's Note:**

> Not mine!  
> I couldn't find the link or anything with this so I've posted it here :)  
> All creds to the original author!!!

\---  
Brendon is lying flat on his back, his muscles relaxing against the hard mattress. He has been on his feet all morning, all afternoon too, making smoothies, so the tension seeping out of him aches as he stretches. It’s Saturday, the end of another week, and Brendon thinks that this one went by just as slowly as the one before. They’re all the same.

He’s staring up at the ceiling, counting the crack and bumps marring the plaster, and he’s grateful that he’s on the top floor since he figures that he could withstand the roof falling in on him. A whole other apartment – probably not. Still, he stores away that tiny fleeting gratitude for living on the top floor to take out and contemplate the next time he’s heaving a large bag of groceries or something else heavy up the stairs.

The apartment is quiet, though there’s a low humming in Brendon’s ears still from the massive rush around three o’clock when all the mothers in Vegas apparently decided en mass to take their children to get ‘healthy fruit smoothies’. You’d think that mothers would tip well, but Brendon has learned that an oversized coffee mug sitting next to the register often gets overlooked.

Brendon sighs, thinking of that stupid coffee mug and the six dollars that it held at the end of his shift and wonders when his next apartment payment is due. He has it marked on the calendar, but that’s all the way across his (admittedly rather small) apartment. Too far, especially when his body is just starting to relax.

Instead, Brendon reaches out next to him, hand feeling around blindly since he’s still staring at the ceiling, and when he knocks against a cylindrical tube, he pulls it up against his chest. He pops open the lid to the Pringles and pulls out a chip. The curve of the chip digs into the soft roof of his mouth, but it crunches and breaks satisfyingly as his tongue presses in against the Pringle. He smiles. Simple pleasures.

There’s really nothing that’d he’d rather be doing right now than lie flat on his mattress, stare at the ceiling, and eat Pringles. Well, there are things that he’d rather be doing. Many things, a million things, but none of them are options right now. He had given up a life of options so that he could have a life of choices.

Brendon brushes off his thoughts, too exhausted to doubt the last several weeks, and he lets out a whoosh of air that almost sounds like the E above middle C, so of course, naturally, he starts to hum, breaking free after only a couple of muted notes to sing quietly under his breath. He lets his mind wander, get lost in the notes. Brendon doesn’t want to think about work or bills or how he had woken up this morning supremely awkward, wondering if he had ruined a new friendship by letting his sleep deprived mouth run away from him again.

He has a pretty simple melody going, but he stops abruptly when he hears a crashing noise in the hallway quickly followed by a grumbled stream of swearing and his ears pick up.

He leans up slightly on the mattress, elbows propping him up, and he turns towards the front door, only a couple of feet away, really. Again, the grumbles float under the crack, and Brendon pushes himself off the mattress to make his way across the apartment, a smile playing at his mouth at the familiar tone, and it doesn’t even dim as pain shoots down Brendon’s back at a particularly hard step down. It doesn’t even dim as Brendon remembers Ryan’s eyes the night before, that startled look in them that he had held before he had darted out.

When Brendon opens the door, the site that greets him is more than a little comical, but the laugh that escapes him is soft and gentle, more because of who is there lying amongst the wreckage of plastic bags, their contents spilling out, than because of his self restraint. Ryan has a tendency to take things personally - especially now, when every little thing seemed to be setting him off, but Brendon knows better. He knows that Ryan’s more frequent visits have more to them than their quickly intensifying (confusing?) friendship. But still, he can’t help but wonder, can’t help but hope.

“You okay?” Brendon asks, holding onto the paint chipped frame of the door to lean over and look at Ryan.

Ryan is sprawled out on the floor, long limbs folded up, and Brendon watches as he takes a deep breath, his whole body pushing up, before Ryan sighs and closes his eyes, hair falling into place to block the shuttering lids. “Perfect,” Ryan monotones, using one of his hands to push back his falling hair, strands wrapping around long fingers, and he looks up at Brendon. “Do you think maybe I could get some help?”

Another quiet laugh slips through Brendon’s lips and he nods, leaning down to help pick up the spilled contents of the bags, when he actually stops and looks at what is currently splayed all around Ryan. “What is this?” Brendon asks. His fingers close around the cool wooden handle of a paint roller and he picks it up questioningly. “Paint?”

“Obviously,” Ryan says, using a bucket of paint to prop himself up as if to demonstrate his point. “And I think that a couple of rollers set off down the hallway,” he mentions, pulling himself up, picking up a plastic bag as he goes, stuffing it with paint trays.

Brendon looks down the hallway where the three pack of yellow roller replacements are just visible in the dim light, but directs his attention back to Ryan and frowns. “I get that this is paint stuff,” he says, “but why exactly is it here?”

Ryan doesn’t answer, but simply bustles past Brendon to lug the heavy paint cans into the apartment. Brendon just sighs, goes to retrieve the runaway rollers, and follows Ryan back into the apartment, trying in his head to actually work out the logistics to how one hundred pound Ryan managed to get the mass of paint stuff now littering the ground of his apartment up the stairs.

“Do you have any old newspapers or something?” Ryan asks, looking around the small space. “We’ll need to put something down so that we don’t ruin the floor.”

“No, I don’t have any newspaper,” Brendon answers automatically, and then it hits him. “Wait, Ryan, no. We’re not painting the apartment.” He nearly flushes red in embarrassment because he didn’t automatically understand that the paint Ryan was carrying would be used for his apartment, but really, Ryan was constantly surprising Brendon, so he doesn’t worry too much about it.

“Why not?” Ryan asks, rummaging through the plastic bags to pull out all of the materials.

Brendon flails silently for a minute. “There’s a lot of reasons. Namely, I don’t think that I’m even allowed to paint the walls. I think I have to ask permission or something.” Plus, Brendon wants to say, there are so many other things that they need to figure out. So many other things that they need to talk about. He’s not stupid. He knows that the pail of paint set between him and Ryan is there to wipe away what happened. Paint over it.

Ryan just shrugs. “Who cares. It’ll be a huge improvement no matter what. The walls right now are depressing. I can’t stand to look at them like this another day. They’re so dull. So drab.” He turns, eyes peeking a glimpse at Brendon before he turns his attention back to the offending walls. “It’s so unlike you,” he says quietly. Ryan coughs, and then continues, “Isn’t an apartment supposed to be reflective of the people that live in it?” He pauses. “Person,” he corrects.

Brendon hides a small smile at the slip even though Ryan’s attention is still fully focused on the ugly brown-grey walls because maybe, just maybe, that means something. “So you decided that we need to paint,” he concludes. “And what color exactly are we painting the walls?” He grins, the stress of the day, the aching of his muscles, all apparently vanishing. The questions though, what had happened the night before, all of that remains, and Brendon can’t help but prod a little bit. “What color defines this apartment, defines me?”

Turning, Ryan frowns. “I should probably change if we’re going to paint,” he says, looking down at his clothes. “I think I have a pair of sweats here somewhere,” he mumbles, more to himself than to Brendon, changing the subject, directing it to where he wants it to go. “And a t-shirt.”

“Yeah,” Brendon responds absent-mindedly, frowning because he doesn’t know if they’ll ever talk about it. Maybe they’ll just go on ignoring it, pretend like it never happened forever. “They’re over there in that stack of clean laundry. I washed them this afternoon with my colors.” Ryan nods and sets off across the room to pull his sweat pants out of the pile. “But, Ryan, what color are we painting the room?”

With his change of clothes in his hands, Ryan heads towards the bathroom, but before he closes the door he shouts “Blue” over his shoulder

Brendon pauses on this for a second, but really, he doesn’t even know how to, or if he can, read into that, so he just shakes his head, and grabs his backpack from out of the corner of the room. From the bottom of the bag, Brendon pulls out a mass of wrinkled papers and sets them down against the floor in front of the far wall, the one that the mattress faces.

The door to the bathroom opens and Ryan steps out, well worn sweatpants hanging low on his hips, and Brendon can remember the feel of them, how soft they are, and he busies himself by laying down another layer of old homework and passed back tests.

“Blue,” he says, straightening up, muscles aching a little, but he ignores them easily enough. “Why blue?” Ryan doesn’t respond, just opens the plastic wrapper to one of the rollers. “Why not yellow? Yellow’s cheery. I’m cheery,” Brendon says and then amends, “usually.”

“Yellow’s a suicidal color,” Ryan remarks, his voice sounding disinterested, and Brendon figures that it’s a good sign that he doesn’t remind Ryan of wanting to kill himself.

“What about green?” Brendon questions.

“Greed,” Ryan states. “Envy. Competition.”

“Red?”

“Destruction. Hate.”

“So I’m blue,” Brendon says. “How so?”

“It just fit, okay?” Ryan says, and his tone is suddenly a little sharp. “Get me a knife from the kitchen so that I can open this, yeah?”

Brendon sighs but fetches the knife and hands it to Ryan, who begins to pry off the lid. “But blue is such a sad color,” Brendon says, almost whispers, because is that what he is to Ryan?

Ryan’s hair is falling again, hiding his face as he works at opening the can of paint, and his words come out a little breathless. “Not sad,” Ryan says. “Not depressing,” he adds. “Calming. Inspiring. An escape.” He plops down as the lid pops off, and Brendon gets his first look at the color that Ryan chose.

It’s blue, just like Ryan promised, but it’s not that bright blue that Brendon often sees painted across the eyes of scene girls or that light pastel blue of Easter. It’s almost like a mixture, and the best way that Brendon can think to describe it is how the sky looks just before the sun sets. The way that the clear blue of the sky is streaked with yellows and reds and purples, and sometimes, it’s a little hazy, a little dimmed, but altogether, it’s still blue. It’s still pure.

The color is beautiful, there’s no question about it, but when Brendon looks at it, he doesn’t see himself reflected in the hue. He sees Ryan.

“Do you like the color?” Ryan asks, and his voice isn’t quite as strong as normal, not quite as sure.

Brendon nods. He does. It reminds him of everything Ryan had said, it reminds him of Ryan, but he doesn’t say that. Instead, he just smiles at the other boy and says, “It’s perfect. Just what we need for our apartment.” He uses the words, tests them out, because while Ryan’s name may not be on the lease, Brendon doesn’t have any problem with letting Ryan in, letting Ryan make the apartment his own.

There’s a small flicker that flashes past Ryan’s eyes, a recognition, but he doesn’t say anything, just bends to pour some of the paint into one of the plastic trays.

“Don’t we need to do a coat of primer first?” Brendon asks, vaguely remembering something like that from his time painting houses for The Mission.

“We’re not going to be here long,” Ryan says, says it like it’s a promise of a better future. “It just needs to last for as long as we’re here.”

Brendon watches as Ryan rolls the brush in the paint, hesitating a little, but then Brendon picks up his own roller, dips it in the paint, and without much thought or preparation, he steps on top of one of his old quizzes, some of the blue dripping down to cover over the dates of important events of the Revolution, and rolls a streak of paint down, the color transferring boldly onto the drab wall, already making the room brighter.

Ryan just stands there, looking at the blue mark, but then his lips quirk and he follows suit, bringing his paint roller down against the wall, his own blue mark blending with Brendon’s.

They paint the wall fast and reckless, Brendon zig-zagging his strokes, Ryan rolling again and again up and down, and it probably won’t turn out perfectly, but they’re both okay with that.

When they finish the one wall, some drops of paint that had pooled together still dripping down, they find that there’s really not enough paint to do anymore. Brendon shrugs his shoulders and gives Ryan a smile. “It doesn’t matter,” he says. “At least we have this one.”

Brendon moves towards the window and opens it, fresh air immediately filtering in, and it’s a relief. He hadn’t realized how strong the fumes of the paint were, and he sticks his head out the window, shaking his hair in the darkness of the night that had fallen sometime during their painting.

It only takes a couple of seconds. A beat, maybe two, before Ryan’s body brushes up against his as the older boy sticks his head out the window too, chest heaving as he takes a deep breath.

“You’re ridiculous,” Brendon says, laughing a little, and Ryan’s low chuckle joins his laugh, creating a striking harmony. “Hey,” he says, noticing for the first time a streak of blue swiped across Ryan’s cheek. Brendon lets one of his hands fall down Ryan’s arm and he pulls the other boy along with him back into the apartment. “You have some paint on you,” he says.

Brendon’s one hand, the one not still gripping Ryan’s arm, reaches up to brush against the paint on Ryan’s cheek. Brendon wipes at it, fingers ghosting across Ryan’s skin, and suddenly, it hits Brendon how similar this motion is to last night.

Maybe it’s the fumes of the paint, still lingering around them, or maybe it’s something else that has been building for awhile, something that had escaped before and was dying to creep free again, but Brendon’s hand smoothes down Ryan’s cheek and moves to cup at his jaw.

Ryan doesn’t make a move to get away, but his eyes widen a little and his tongue flits across his lower lip. Brendon takes a step closer, his thumb still splayed across the rough patch of blue paint on Ryan’s skin, but he doesn’t lean in, doesn’t force it.

They just stand there for a second, the two of them, breathing heavily, eyes locked, set up against a freshly painted, blue, oh so blue, background until another move is made, and Ryan makes a stumbling shuffle forward, pressing his jaw further into Brendon’s hand, bringing their sock covered feet so close together that the cotton reaches out and sticks.

“I know that you don’t want to talk about what happened last night,” Brendon begins, his voice quiet, his words careful, his thoughts racing. “I know that this whole painting thing was probably to avoid this conversation but…” He doesn’t really know how to finish what he wants to say, doesn’t really know what to say, but that’s alright, because when he takes a deep breath to fumble on, it’s taken from him as Ryan’s mouth crashes down against his.

The room is quiet and mostly bare. There’s a simple mattress in the middle of the floor, a mass of sheets crumbled up at the edge. There’s a mostly neatly folded pile of laundry against one of the dull brown walls. There’s a walkway into the bathroom where a little bit of light is flooding out. The kitchen has a lone pot decorating the cabinet, and if you were to look inside the refrigerator, you wouldn’t find much.

There’s not much remarkable about the apartment, not much to distinguish it, save for a few things. In the corner, propped up against a folding chair, there’s a guitar with a well worn strap, one that hints at all it’s use. There’s a calendar tacked to the wall, counting down the days left until the rent is due, counting the days left until graduation, until Maryland. There are three dull brown walls, three walls of no importance or significance, but then there’s the forth wall. The wall that is so freshly painted that it’s still wet, so new that drops of paint are still dripping down, and in front of that wall, there’s nothing there but two boys. Two boys sharing everything they have, putting faith in each other, one with a paint roller still firmly held in his hand, blue paint pooling down onto the scattered paper.


End file.
